Where " Don Quixote " was Written 



" Will your worship smoke ? " offering him a cigarillo. 



" Thank you ; we have tobacco." 



" Tomady homhre " (help yourselfj my dear sir), said I, 

 with much cordiality. The fact was, 1 wished to draw a 

 cloud before the eyes of these officials, to prevent them from 

 observing that I had broken the rotten old mill, which they 

 would have as much felt it incumbent on them to punish 

 me for, as if it had been the soundest institution in Spain. 



Before going away, we hewed two pieces of wood out of 

 the huge decayed stump of a tree, which must have been 

 growing in Don Quixote's time, as relics. 



On our return to the posada^ we found the medico waiting 

 or us, and proceeded to the house of Ouijana. A civil old 

 woman brought a lamp, and we went down a flight of seven 

 steps into a long, narrow, round-arched vault. This damp 

 and dismal apartment is about ten feet broad, and twenty- 

 four feet long, and seven feet high along the middle of the 

 vault. She said, with as much certainty as if she had been 

 on the spot at the time, and brought him his meals, that 

 Cervantes sat at this end (turning to the left from the 

 entrance), and he was allowed a lamp to write by. 



We tried to fancy him there. A smallish, spare, high- 

 featured man, with long hair and a neglected beard, a manta 

 or two from his bed wrapped round his legs, and thrown 

 over his shoulders ; he sits, scratching away by fits and 

 starts, in a quaint, beady hand, illegible to us moderns, as 

 we peep inquisitively at the papers before him. Now and 

 then he pauses, and looks at the flame of the lamp, — a 

 smile flickers over the worn features, — some bright idea has 

 crossed his mind, — he laughs aloud. We wonder the damp, 

 dull echo of his prison-roof does not startle and chill his 

 hilarity. But he is used to it, and takes no heed of where 

 he is. His fancy is lit, — he is free now, and revelling in 



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